Psychoanalytic and Cultural Theory

The lecture series devotes itself to the influence of psychoanalysis on cultural theories at large as well as to particularly poignant applications of psychoanalytical research to current cultural phenomena. The central psychoanalytic concepts of Freud and his successors are to be taken up in an open and non-partisan fashion and applied to the cultural, political, and economic phenomena encountered today. Whereas early psychoanalysis dealt primarily with the family as it was shaped by bourgeois Victorian society, current research increasingly focuses on extreme kinds of individualization, social uncertainties and threats, as well as on new digital and technological cultural techniques. The series would like to develop new, critical, and innovative readings of psychoanalytic theory and combine them with concepts and ideas from the humanities and from cultural critique.

Udo Hock will talk about the psychoanalytical term of ‘Entstellung’ (distortion). Samo Tomšič, who studied with Slavoj Žižek, will present his research on Lacanian Marxism and structuralism. Christoph Türcke will focus on the discussion of role models and ‘identification’. Jule Govrin will trace the theory of desire (Begehren) from 1968 to queer theory, Marie Kolkenbrock will treat the theoretical and literary aspects of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and Arthur Schnitzler, while Laurence Rickels will explore the concept of fantasy from the perspective of cryptology.

A cooperation of the BIPP, the Department of Cultural History and Theory of the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, and the ICI Berlin, organized by Wilhelm Brüggen (BIPP), Monika Englisch, and Andreas Gehrlach (HU Berlin)

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